"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Edmund Burke

September 20, 2008

When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

These words should sound familiar to readers of Auspundits. That is because it resembles very much the words of Christian writer Malcolm Muggeridge. Words that I am oft disposed to quoting:

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down, until at last having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction he keels over a weary old Brontosaurus and becomes extinct.

Similar words were spoken by Alexander Solzhenitsyn's in infamous 1978 Harvard address:

…no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of will power…weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions…the next war…may well bury Western civilisation forever.

August 21, 2008

Spengler's article focused on the misalignment between the West's perception of Russia's existential threats, and Russia's own assessment.

It would pay to consider another misalignment of Western perceptions: those of its own existential threats. The US is fixated solidly on the Russian nuclear arsenal (if they are being at all rational, that is).

But there is Islam. There is Pakistan and Iran. There is Syria. There is China. There is a resurgent Latin American "Bolivarian" socialism.
They could all use a friend.

This is not all, however. We also need to consider another asymmetry. Russia is solidly behind their government's aggressive policies, and would support far more aggression in the future. The first observation to make here is that Russians would be equally supportive of any decisive action against Islamism in their neighbourhood. What a waste..

The more important observation, is that effectively there is no "West" in any meaningful, strategic sense. There is no alignment of interests, common threat assessment or unity of action. Indeed, Russia is right now negotiating a separate security arrangement with Germany. What does this do to NATO ? Italy and France are trying to put the brakes on an NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, and the NATO reaction to the Estonian cyber-war was an interesting foretaste of likely "touch one, touch all" bluster from a NATO that in the end cannot be bothered.

So no Rubicon has been crossed. Caesar is going to win again, at least in the short term. Indeed, his sticky end is pre-ordained this time
around too, the Senate's daggers replaced with Spengler's demographics.

The best part of all is that there is a best part. Much good is going to come of a Europe bordering on the insane in its pacifism, left wing
nuttery and anti-americanism realising that the wolf is at the door, that European solidarity is as bogus as the notion of soft power, and
that that the wolf (Bear ?) has his paws on the gas taps during a winter that says more about failing sunspots than it does about global warming. Time they learned.

In relation to the military operation by Britain and France against Egyptian forces during the 1956 Suez crisis, the recently retired Sir Winston Churchill was quoted as saying, "I am not sure I should have dared to start; but I am sure I should not have dared to stop."

I think that a reasonable analogy can be drawn in relation to Nato expansion to encompass the Ukraine and Georgia. Moose's arguments have force, but as one might say, 'we have crossed the Rubicon.' A retreat now would reinforce Russia in its autocracy and gangsterism, and, incidentally, send a message of weakness to our Islamist enemies. Re Spengler's comments about Saakashvili of Georgia. Me thinks he protests too much. Spengler is exploiting imperfection in order to create equivalence.

Russia faces the choice between an ultimately self-destructive isolationism and linkage with Western Europe in an association of independent liberal democratic states. Many years ago, De Gaulle envisaged a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. Having come this far, the West cannot now retreat. On the contrary, it could exploit the opportunity if only the Western Europeans could finally recognize the absurdity of the European Union structure.

I agree completely with Spengler and have been saying for years that "the Orange Mistake" would gain the West nothing, while turning a valuable ally in the Long War into an implacable and tenacious enemy.

August 16, 2008

Many pundits are opining that Russia's invasion of Georgia is a throwback its stately antecedent, the Soviet Union. Its new-found aggression is a result of its imperial ambition and desire to subsume its former satellite states. Or such is the talk. The customary allusion is made to Vladmir Putin having been a KGB operative who at various points was involved in repressing political dissent in the Soviet Union or doing cloak and dagger stuff in Europe. All of which is factually correct and all of which, I argue, is beside the point.

Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev is a business man. Not political apparatchik. And Putin, for all of his snooping around Eastern Europe in the 1980s for the KGB, demonstrated, during his presidency, that ideology matters little to his policies. Although the language that we hear from the likes of Medvedev, Putin and Lavrov and the theatrics we have witnessed at the United Nations Security Council are earily reminiscent of a bygone era, their policies share little with those fashioned by the likes of Krushchev or Brezhnev.

I argue that what we are now seeing is not so much a Russian regression to communism but rather Russia's progression to a mercantile market state. And in so doing, its evolution to a market state is occurring much faster (and started much earlier) than any other market state. And to its strategic advantage.

First a literary excursion to explain some of the concepts raised in the last paragraph.

July 21, 2008

Extremists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of Britain's young Muslims, a disturbing police report warns.

The money shot:

Bringing people through faster might be a way of trying to limit the risks of detection prior to going operational. So whereas previously the al-Qa'eda network challenged state security services through using a small select cadre of skilled operatives, they might equally stretch capacity by mounting a larger number of less sophisticated attacks.

Police and councils have been told to avoid putting some Islamic extremists through the criminal justice system. Members of extremist groups have have not “clearly” committed a crime would receive therapy and counselling under new Government plans to “deradicalise” religious fanatics.

June 02, 2008

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN ENGLAND: "A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. . . . The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a 'hate crime' and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that 'no-go areas' for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year."

May 28, 2008

Walid Phares is a man steeped with understanding of the political and military machinations of the Middle East and is originally from Lebanon. Therefore any strategic assessment he provides should be taken seriously.

About a week ago, Dr. Phares wrote a long post on the strategic implications of the completion of Hezb'allah's shadow fibre-optic network in Lebanon.

May 17, 2008

Despite the setbacks that God has inflicted upon us, these painful blows will mark the beginning of the wiping out of America and the infidel West after the passing of tens of years, God willing. - Osama bin Laden, 17 December 2001